Under the Shadow of Etna Part 12

Then he let his nose hang down and drooped his pendent ears, like a full-fledged a.s.s with eyes dulled, as if he were weary of gazing across over that vast plain, smoking here and there with the dust of the threshing-floors, and he seemed made for nothing else than to die of thirst and enforced treading on sheaves.

At eventide, it was sent to the village with the saddle-bags filled full, and the _padrone's_ boy followed, to p.r.i.c.k it in the withers, along the hedges lining the road, that seemed alive with the chattering of the tomt.i.ts, and the odor of the catnip and rosemary; and the a.s.s would gladly have s.n.a.t.c.hed a mouthful, if they had not always kept it on the go, until at last, the blood ran to its legs and they had to take it to the farrier; but this did not trouble the _padrone_, because the harvest was good, and the young a.s.s had earned its cost,--his thirty-two _lire_ and a half. The _padrone_ said,--

"Now, the work has worn him out, but if I could sell him for twenty _lire_, I should still have made a good thing out of him."

The only person who had a fondness for the young a.s.s was the boy who made it trot over the road on the way from the threshing-floor. And he felt badly when the farrier burnt its legs with red-hot irons, so that the young a.s.s squirmed and flung its tail into the air, and p.r.i.c.ked up its ears, and when it ran across the field of the fair, and it tried to break loose from the twisted rope which they fastened to its lip, and it rolled its eyes with the agony, as if it were undergoing torture, when the farrier's apprentice came to change the hot irons, red as fire, and the skin smoked and sizzled, like fish in a frying-pan. But _compare_ Neli cried to his boy,--

"You beast! what are you weeping for? Now that he is played out, and since the harvest has been a good one, we'll sell him and buy a mule, and that will be better."

Boys do not understand some things, and after the young a.s.s was sold to _ma.s.saro_ Cirino, of Licodiana, _compare_ Neli's son used to visit it in the stall, and to caress its face and neck, and the a.s.s would turn round its head, and snuff as if it had become attached to him, while, as a general thing, a.s.ses are made to be tied wherever their _padrone_ may see fit to tie them, and change their lot as they change their stall.

_Ma.s.saro_ Cirino, of Licodiana, had paid a very small price for the Saint Joseph's a.s.s, because it still bore the scars on its pastern, and _compare_ Neli's wife, when she saw the poor beast go by with its new master, said,--

"That beast was our mascot. That black and white skin brought joy to the threshing-floor, and now the profits are going from bad to worse, for we have had to sell the mule, too."

_Ma.s.saro_ Cirino had yoked the a.s.s to the plow, together with an old mare which matched it like a stone in a ring, and drew her brave furrow all day long, for miles and miles, from the time the lark began to sing in the clear morning sky, till, with quick and hasty flights, and melancholy chirping, the robin red-b.r.e.a.s.t.s ran to hide behind the naked bushes, trembling with cold under the mist that rose like a sea.

Only, as the a.s.s was smaller than the mare, a cushion of hay was put over the saddle under the yoke, and it had hard work to break up the frozen clods, by dint of chafed shoulders.

"It'll help spare the mare, who's getting old," said _ma.s.saro_ Cirino.

"It's got a heart as broad and big as the Plain of Catania, that Saint Joseph's a.s.s has! and you would not think it!"

And he added, turning to his wife, who had followed him, wrapped in a mantellina, penuriously scattering the seed,--

"If anything should happen to it--Heaven forefend--we are ruined with the prospects before us."

The woman looked forward to the prospects of crops in the rocky, desolate, little field, with its white and cracked soil, so long had it been since the rain fell, and all the water it got came in the form of mist and fog, of the kind that spoils the seed, and when it was time to dig up the ground, it was so yellow and hard, that you would call it the very beard of the devil, as if it had been burnt with sulphur matches!

"In spite of the crop which I put in," mourned _ma.s.saro_ Cirino, pulling off his doublet, "why, that a.s.s has worked himself to death like a stupid mule. That a.s.s is under a curse!"

His wife had a lump in her throat at the sight of the parched field, and she replied with tears rolling from her eyes,--

"The a.s.s had nothing to do with the failure. It brought a good crop to _compare_ Neli. But we are unfortunate."

So the Saint Joseph's a.s.s changed masters once more, when _ma.s.saro_ Cirino returned from the field with the sickle over his shoulder, it being useless even to try to reap that year, although the images of the saints had been stuck into bamboo sticks all over the ground for protection, and two _tar_[17] had been paid to the priest for his blessing.

[17] A _tar_ is one-thirtieth of an _onza_.

"It's the devil that we want rather than the saints," said _ma.s.saro_ Cirino, irreverently, when he saw all those stalks standing up like crests, which even the a.s.s refused to touch, and he spat up towards that turquoise-colored sky, so relentlessly cloudless.

It was then that _compare_ Luciano, the carter, meeting _ma.s.saro_ Cirino, as he was driving back the a.s.s with empty saddlebags, asked,--

"What'll you take for that Saint Joseph's a.s.s?"

"Anything you'll give me! Cursed be he and the saint who made him!"

replied _ma.s.saro_ Cirino. "Now we haven't any more bread to eat, or fodder to give the beast."

"I'll give you fifteen _lire_ for it, seeing that you are ruined, but the a.s.s isn't worth so much, for it won't last out more than six months! See how thin it is!"

"You might have got more than that," grumbled _ma.s.saro_ Cirino's wife, after the bargain was settled. "_Compare_ Luciano's mule's dead, and he hadn't money enough to buy another. Now if he hadn't bought our Saint Joseph's a.s.s, he wouldn't have known what to do with his cart and harnesses; you'll see that a.s.s'll be a fortune to him."

The a.s.s was set to work drawing the cart, but the shafts of it were much too high for it, and brought all the weight on its shoulders, so that it would not have survived even six months; for it went limping along over the hilly roads under _compare_ Luciano's cruel cudgelling, who tried to put a little spirit into it; and when it went down hill, the case was even worse, for then the whole load rested on it, and pushed against it so hard that it had to make its back like an arch to hold the cart back, and push with those poor scarred legs, and people would laugh to see it, and when it fell it would have taken all the angels of Paradise to get it to its feet again. But _compare_ Luciano knew that he carried three quintals of merchandise more than a mule, and the load would bring him five _tar_ a quintal.

"Every day that Saint Joseph's a.s.s lives," said he, "I make fifteen _tar_, and his keep costs me less than a mule's would."

Every time the people who happened to be sauntering along behind the cart saw the poor beast, which could hardly put one leg in front of the other, arching its spine and panting heavily, with discouragement clouding its eye, they would say,--

"Block the wheel with a rock, and let that poor creature have a chance to get its breath."

But _compare_ Luciano would reply,--

"If I let him do as he pleases, I should not make my fifteen _tar_ a day. His hide's got to pay for mine. When he can't do any more work I shall sell him to the lime dealer; for the beast is good enough for his work. I tell you there's no truth at all in the idea that St.

Joseph's a.s.ses are _vigliacchi_. Besides, I got this one of _ma.s.saro_ Cirino for a piece of bread, after he was 'poverished."

In this way the Saint Joseph's a.s.s pa.s.sed into the hands of the lime-dealer, who already possessed a score or more of a.s.ses all lean and moribund, which carried his sacks of plaster, and picked up a wretched living by means of the mouthfuls of weeds that they could s.n.a.t.c.h as they went along the road.

The lime-dealer objected to the Saint Joseph's a.s.s because it was covered with worse scars than his other beasts, with its legs seared by the hot iron, and the skin on its chest worn off by the poitrel, and the withers raw by the chafing of the plow, and the knees barked by constant falls, and then that pelt of black and white seemed to him so inharmonious among his other brown-skinned animals.

"That makes no difference," replied _compare_ Luciano. "Besides, it will serve to distinguish your a.s.ses at a distance."

But he deducted two _tar_ from the seven _lire_ that he had asked, so as to bring the business to a settlement.

Now the Saint Joseph's a.s.s would not have been recognized even by the _padrona_ who had been present when it was born, so greatly had it changed as it stumbled along with its nose to the ground and its ears curled over like an umbrella under the lime-dealer's heavy sacks, twitching its flanks under the blows of the youth who drove the caravan. But then the _padrona_ herself was changed at that time, what with the bad harvests they had gathered and the hunger from which she had suffered, and the fevers which they had all contracted in the low lands, she and her husband and her Turiddu, while they had no money to buy any more quinine at the apothecary's and at the same time they had no more a.s.ses even of the Saint Joseph kind to sell for the small price of thirty-five _lire_!

In winter, when there was little work and the wood for burning the lime was scarce, and to be had only at a distance, and the frozen paths hadn't a leaf on their hedges or a mouthful of stubble along by the icy gutters, life was still harder for those poor brutes, and the _padrone_ knew that in winter not half as much was eaten; so he used to buy a good stock of provisions in the spring.

At night the drove remained in the open air near the lime-burners, and the brutes cl.u.s.tered together for protection against the cold. But those stars shining like swords through and through them in spite of their thick hides, and all those ulcer-eaten beasts shook and trembled in the cold as if they were human beings.

But then there are many Christians who are not better off, not having even such a ragged coat as that wrapt up in which the herd-boy slept before the furnace.

Near by there lived a poor widow in a dilapidated hut, more tumble-down by far than the lime-furnace, and through its roof the stars penetrated like swords, as if it were no roof at all, and the wind fluttered the wretched rags of her covering. At first she took in washing, but that was meagre pay, for the people thereabouts do their own washing, when they wash at all, and now that her little boy had grown she went about peddling wood in the village. No one had known her husband and no one knew where she got the wood that she sold; that was known only by her son, who went about picking it up here and there at the risk of getting shot by the _campieri_.

"If you only had an a.s.s!" the lime-dealer had said to her, hoping that he might dispose of that Saint Joseph's a.s.s, which was good for nothing more, "then you could take down to the village much bigger f.a.gots, now that your son is getting to be grown up."

The poor woman had a few _lire_ in the knot of her handkerchief, and she let herself be persuaded into it by the lime-burner, because it is said that "old things go to destruction in the house of a fool."

One thing at least was true: the poor Saint Joseph's a.s.s had a more endurable existence at last, because the widow regarded it as a treasure by reason of the few _soldi_ that it had cost her, and she went out nights in search of straw and hay for it, and she kept it in her hut next her own bed because its vital heat was as good as a fire, and in this way one hand washed the other, as the proverb has it.

The woman driving the a.s.s loaded with a mountain of wood so that its ears could not be seen, built air-castles as she went, and her son ravaged the hedges, and risked his life in the borders of the woodlands to gather together his load, while both mother and son had an idea that they were going to become rich by that business, until, finally, the baron's _campiere_ caught the boy breaking off branches, and gave him a terrible beating.

The doctor, for the price of curing the lad, devoured all the spare _soldi_ knotted in the handkerchief, the store of wood, and whatever else vendible she had,--and that was not much in all conscience,--so that the widow one night when her son was in a raging fever, with his face turned to the wall, and there was not a mouthful of bread in the house, went out, raging and talking to herself, as if she, too, had the fever, and she went to break off an almond-tree near by in such a way that it would not appear how it happened, and at dawn she loaded it on the a.s.s to go and sell it. But the a.s.s on the way up stumbled under the weight, and went down on its knees, just as Saint Joseph's a.s.s knelt before the infant Jesus, and would not get up again.

"Souls of the dead!" stammered the woman, "won't you carry this load of wood for me."